


A History of Flight

by Jackie Thomas (Jackie_Thomas)



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: M/M, Post Series 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-21
Updated: 2014-09-21
Packaged: 2018-02-18 06:01:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2337791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jackie_Thomas/pseuds/Jackie%20Thomas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What happened between the end of S7 and the start of S8 – just getting in before I’m proved wrong.  Spoilers for S7</p>
            </blockquote>





	A History of Flight

I go to arrest my suspect during his Christmas dinner. I recall the blue flare of ignited brandy from the lit pudding and the tissue paper crowns he and his brothers are wearing when they come after me. I remember little else and even these are more impressions than memories. Neighbours call the police who find me unconscious on the gravel driveway, boot print on the side of my head.

I wake up in the ambulance coming into A&E. There are x-rays and investigations. Then I am lying on a trolley in a bay and Lewis is – somehow - there. He is stroking my hair and telling me not to fall asleep.

A flash of pain sends me hedgehog-like folding into myself. I can’t find its centre because it has so many; head, back, wrist, ribs.

“All right, James,” Lewis soothes, his voice close enough for his breath to touch me. “They’ve given you an injection. It won’t hurt for much longer. They’re going to take you for some scans, make sure all the wheels in that giant brain of yours are turning in the right direction.”

I think the wheels are running backwards or have left the road completely. All I have are these multiple points of pain and Lewis. And his presence here is an impossibility. 

“Are you here?” 

“Where else would I be?”

“But, Christmas.”

“That’s right. Did you put yourself on call?”

“I don’t – I don’t know.”

“Well, it’ll come back to you. I heard there was a body found by the Turnkey.”

The memory shakes free from where it is snagged, arriving broken and fever bright. The phone ringing early on Christmas morning after the first of the dog walkers have done their rounds. A swollen moon glancing down from the cloudless sky before spinning away. The wide, surprised gaze of the victim, brown hair matted with blood, body kicked into the shallows and caught in weeds near the riverbank. 

The ground is festive with frost, sketching each leaf and blade of grass in icy white. It has settled on the victim’s clothes where he bobs above water level; a sacrifice to the god of the winter feast. 

The body is hauled from the river, shedding as it surfaces the tributary contained within the landscape of its clothes. Seismic activity has caused a fault line to appear in the geography of its head, collapsing the surrounding foundations.

A PC searching bushes by the road finds a piece of fence from a nearby pub car park. The locum pathologist confirms it is probably the murder weapon. Blunt force trauma after a struggle which went slipping and skidding along the towpath late on Christmas Eve.

I have a sergeant. I try to remember his name but can’t locate it nor, for that matter, the names of any of the others; not the victim, not the doctor, who I’ve known from countless holiday covers. 

My nameless sergeant is sulking, he is missing his daughter’s first Christmas. One way or another this is working out to be my fault. He takes it out on the uniforms, wakes up the Turnkey’s landlady and takes her statement with such ill grace I send him home. First mistake.

I am walking along a white corridor of anonymous doors, I open one and there is a boy hanging by his neck. I am too late to save him.

“Try not to fall asleep, James,” Lewis says. “They want you to stay awake for a while. Try for me, I know it’s hard.” 

His hand moves to my forehead; checking a child’s temperature, granting benediction.

“Sir,”

“Yes, James?”

“Cigarette, I - could you light me a cigarette?”

“No chance, you’ll get us both thrown out. Anyway, look.” He takes my packet of cigarettes from among the jumble of personal effects on a side table. “Are you sure you weren’t steamrollered in a Tom and Jerry cartoon?”

I laugh and a jagged train of pain comes juddering through.

“Ah, sorry,” he says, gentle again. “That wasn’t fair, was it? No more jokes.”

“Sir?”

“Yes?”

“I don’t understand how you’re here.”

“It’s not such a great mystery. You put me down as your next of kin in your file.”

They don’t let you leave it blank.

“Forgot to take you off when we - when you -.”

“I’d like to think they would have told me anyway.”

“But weren’t you – boat – weren’t you on a –“

“Cruise. You heard about that then?”

“Locum Path said, can’t remember, bloody freezing this time of year.”

“That’s right, Norway. Laura’s gone with a friend. We were planning a trip together before we broke up.”

“Can’t have.”

“It wasn’t working, we both knew it.”

“She said to phone you. Are you-?”

“I’m fine, James. I’m completely fine.”

Two nurses come into the bay and Lewis melts away. I realise he couldn’t have been here at all. 

They stick a monitor on the end of my finger, shine a light into my eyes and ask taxing questions. These are tests, I fail them all. I am a piece of evidence to be handled with gloved hands. They bandage my wrist, stitch a cut on my arm, another near my eye.

Then they are called away to an emergency. Probably another bloody idiot, who couldn’t stay in one piece on the most peaceful day of the year.

“No, you didn’t imagine me, I was here all along,” Lewis says. “Like I should have been these last months. No good apart, are we? That’s when it always goes wrong.”

From outside we hear the sound of intense activity and voices raised to a professionally acceptable level of urgency.

“Don’t worry about all that,” Lewis says. “A car skidded on some ice, they’ve got a few casualties coming in. There’s nothing we can do. Now, let’s see, what have we got here?”

Lewis takes over where the nurses left off, bathing my face in warm water where grit and dirt are caught in grazes from the gravel drive. Helpless as a baby, I hand myself over to Lewis. This is not new.

“Why would you go off alone like that?” He murmurs as he works, the cloth brushing over blossoming bruises, the touch comforting all the same. “Why would you do that, when you’ve got a violent suspect? You know better than that.”

He doesn’t seem to expect an answer from me; he is talking to himself, as if my unnecessary risks remain his responsibility. When he has finished with my face he moves onto my hands, wincing when he sees the scrapes on the palm of one and the knuckle of the other. 

“You must have put them out to save yourself. When it was a bit late to think of that.”

The victim’s sister told me about the people her brother borrowed money from and failed to repay. The name she gives me matches the description of a man the victim argued with in the Turnkey last night. Forensics too, come up with a print; a partial match, on the murder weapon. It is more than enough to get me a warrant for my suspect’s arrest.

He is good at vanishing, my suspect; ‘a history of flight’ as the file quaintly expresses it. But his gran is the fixed point in his life and it is Christmas. Overtime cuts mean uniforms are thin on the ground and CID is deserted. This is why I go by myself to arrest him.

I can see how it can be read as a suicide attempt. As can much of my recent behaviour. It is not the same as putting a rope around your neck but overworking, over-drinking, smoking too much, along with volunteering to have your head kicked in probably adds up to much the same thing.

“There,” Lewis says, finishing.

Carefully, as if I am made of bone china, he pats dry first one hand and then the other.

“Thank you, sir,”

“Not sir anymore, remember?” He goes back to stroking my hair. “Or perhaps you don’t. Well, it’ll come back to you later. That’s how it goes with a head injury.”

“Everything that goes, stays gone.”

There is a pause while we both realise what I’ve said. “Aye well, I deserve that.”

“I didn’t mean -. Sir. I didn’t mean -” 

“I know,” he sighs. “Don’t upset yourself. You miss us. I do too.”

“Us.” I want that time back, the time when things weren’t wrong, when I belonged in my place in the world.

“Anyway you might as well hear it, a bit of good news.” He raises his voice to try to drown out groaning from the next bay. “I’m talking to Innocent about coming back to work. I’m bored at home to be perfectly honest. Not flat out on the rota mind; she’s got a project for me she’s getting clearance for. And before you ask, you can’t work for me because we’re the same rank.”

“I’ll go back to –“

“No you won’t. You worked hard to get where you are. You’ll make a fine inspector, just got to get used to it.” 

I don’t deserve the stout confidence with which he props me up. I never have. “Don’t care about -.”

“Rank? You’re a unique kind of copper in that respect.”

“I’ve had two sergeants. They hate me.”

He moves to the entrance of the bay and looks out. “That usually means you’re doing something right.”

“Shouldn’t have –.” I should never have let myself get talked into staying, I knew it was a mistake and now look at me. Can’t move, can’t think. 

There is a white walled corridor lined with anonymous doors.

“James, come on now. No nodding off.”

He is back by my side, giving me his appraising look, pressing his lips into a thin line, as he does when he’s about to put his foot down, “I’m going to see what’s happening with your scans. You’ll be all right on your own for a second?”

A name comes back to me; my two sergeants. Perhaps because they are a two for one offer, both called Richard. Richard the first, Richard the second. Richard the third can’t be long away and that would never end well. I look for Lewis, but he was never there. It would be good to sleep, I can’t remember the last time I slept.

I choose a door.

Lewis appears by my side, pulling me again from this familiar nightmare. He is trying not to let me see he is angry. I realise why he can’t really be here.

“Christmas.”

“Yes, James. Still Christmas.”

“Were you in -? They didn’t make you come from -?”

“I wasn’t in Manchester, if that’s what you’re asking. Lyn’s gone to the in-laws in Yorkshire for Christmas and New Year. All arranged before Laura and me finished.”

“You should, should have -.”

“I’m glad I didn’t because if I was away for Christmas it would have taken me longer to be here with you. I knew there must be a reason.” 

Hangman. Words spell out on a whiteboard, letter by letter, the names march in. The victim is Moran, the Pathologist, Javed, the suspect, Daniel. Someone faraway is calling me. I turn from the board and there is a hanging boy.

******

When I wake again I am on a ward. I am too warm, too well wrapped, like a parcel packed up with bandages, wires and dressings. At first I can’t retrieve a single memory, any explanation for why I’m here.

I turn to find Lewis beside the bed. I’m relieved to see him, but it doesn’t help my sense of disorientation, “What happened?”

“You might call it resisting arrest. A touch of concussion as it turns out, though it looked worse for a moment and I’ll thank you not to scare me like that again.”

Lewis takes my hand as understanding catches up, “Whatever you’re thinking, you are fine.”

I test this statement. It is true my memories seem to be returning, hastily marshalling for inspection like a platoon surprised by the General. There is something appropriate from Blake. I don’t feel any pain either. Though floating as I am on whatever medicinal sea they have set me adrift on it is hard to be conclusive. 

“Is it still - Christmas?”

“Sorry to say no, you’ve missed most of Boxing Day too.” 

I have travelled through time, oblivious on an unconscious cloud but Lewis hasn’t. He is grey and tired looking, he has walked every step. I wonder how long he has sat vigil beside my bed.

“You should go home and rest.” 

“And have you persuading yourself I was never here? I’ll stay for a while longer, thanks very much.”

He tells the nurses I’m awake. They run through their tests, take a note of the results. They don’t seem perturbed by what they find. They tell me I’ll be discharged soon, they tell me there is nothing that won’t mend with time. And, no, apparently I can’t have a cigarette.

When they have gone Lewis resumes holding my hand. His touch registers a memory it takes a moment to place. He was with me before, I realise, perhaps saving my life all over again.

“Innocent’s been in,” he says. “You slept through her. I don’t know if that was strategic. Any number of people named Richard have been parked outside waiting for you to wake up. I’ve sent them away.”

“Here?” 

“They’ve got them, by the way, the ones who did this to you. Your Richards and half the nick.”

“On Christmas?”

“Course they did. What do you think, they’re just going to let it go? One of our own. In case you’re wondering, don’t expect to remember anything just before you got hurt or after. Head like an anvil you, but none of that is coming back.”

I think what a rubbish witness I’ll make if we ever get to court. I remember nothing after leaving the station to arrest Daniels. I assume it wasn’t my finest hour and this is when whatever happened, happened. I remember some things though. I remember Lewis and Laura are no longer together and -

“You’re coming back to work.”

“That’s right. Innocent just confirmed it. She wants me to run a new unit for violent crime. Not got too much detail yet but she thinks I should go for DCI. I’ve said if that’s the case I want you with me, if it suits you. She said that seemed to be for the best.”

I can’t do anything except smile.

He dips down to kiss me on the forehead and then, after some troubling thought skims across the surface of his eyes, he thinks again and kisses my lips. This also seems to be something I’ve forgotten returning to me.  
“You mustn’t, you mustn’t risk yourself like that again. You’ve got to promise me. Because you are loved, you’re really loved. And you’re needed and, I’m sorry, but I can’t do without you anymore.”

I focus on my hands, one is taped and wired and no longer belongs to me. The other is only bandaged at the wrist, this one I lift. I put my fingers to my lips, testing the reality of what happened. Something has worked loose from my brain, I have to be sure.

“No, James you didn’t imagine it,” Lewis says, it seems not for the first time. He sits in the chair by the bed, picks up a newspaper and pretends to read. “That kiss is yours to do what you want with. You can forget it if you like or you can come back to me about it when you’re better.”

“Robbie,” I say and he looks up. “I won’t forget. I’ll come back to you.”

 

End

 

September 2014


End file.
